Simon Park’s textile designs are created with social and antisocial bacteria.

These are examples from a series of works featuring purely biogenic designs, which explore the inherent creativity of, and which use nature, to directly generate textile designs. Physarum polycephalum is an intriguing and striking microorganism that exhibits simple “intelligence”. In this respect, it will move toward favourable and away from hostile environments, can solve a maze in its search for food, and has a primitive memory. The intricate yellow designs on the denim material are the living slime mould itself and more than this, are a visible expression of its intelligence as it explores its environment and searches for food. The living design moves at around 1mm per hour and its pattern changes as the slime mould responds “intelligently” to its environment.